[1] [2] In 1930, Stephen Taber demonstrated that liquid water migrates towards the freeze line within soil.
He showed that other liquids, such as benzene, which contracts when it freezes, also produce frost heave.
[3] Fine-grained soils such as clays and silts enable greater negative pressures than more coarse-grained soils due to the smaller pore size.
In periglacial environments, this mechanism is highly significant and it is the predominant process in ice lens formation in permafrost areas.
[5] In 2023, experiments from the ETH Zurich were published, in which the process could be observed between glass slides in a confocal microscope.